Re: How many Christians are there in America?

In article
<9e8d6af3-fc32-43f3-901e-fb082617c848@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Lee Ratner  <LBRatner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>     This OT for the newsgroup but considering the collective
>knowledge and wisdom of the people here, I thought this is the best
>place to clarify something that has been confusing me for years. Most
>people here know that I am a Jew and an American. Growing up, I always
>assumed that most of the non-Jews in America were Christian. Then I
>learned that many Americans consider themselves to be agnostics,
>athiests, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists etc. Still, most Americans were
>Christian. However, the way some Christian Americans depict
>themselves, you would think that only a minority of Americans are
>Christians and the rest of the country is filled with heathens. I
>point to Evangelical Christians as an example of this. Now are they
>just using some definition of Christian that I am unaware of or is
>something else going on?

For one thing, a lot of the people who say that "Christians" are
a minority, persecuted or otherwise, are (as you indicate)
Evangelicals or Pentecostals or some other Protestant sub-group,
and they consider anyone outside that group to be not a
Christian.  Whole categories of such people, for example, don't
consider me to be a Christian because I'm a Catholic.  I remember
one such, haranguing me in a bus lo these many years ago,
complaining about the commercialization of Christmas, we should
put Christ back into Christmas, "and *even though* you're a
Catholic, I'm sure you believe in Christ."  (Emphasis mine.)

Narrow definitions: that's part of it.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]